Jeremy Lin opens up about how disrespectful Kobe Bryant was to him and when Lin confronted him about his bad body language & leadership style, Kobe went months without talking to him
Reminds me of when Rondo said something similar to LeBron during his first season in LA.
Source
“When guys are making the same mistakes over and over and over, it’s hard to bite your tongue,” Rondo says, “but I tried to get [James] to focus on his body language.” “Those young guys were looking at everything he did. If they missed four shots in a row and LeBron was making a face, it was crushing to them. He was their Michael Jordan. They didn’t want to let him down.“
“When guys are making the same mistakes over and over and over, it’s hard to bite your tongue,” Rondo says, “but I tried to get [James] to focus on his body language.”
“Those young guys were looking at everything he did. If they missed four shots in a row and LeBron was making a face, it was crushing to them. He was their Michael Jordan. They didn’t want to let him down.“
Rondo was one of the only players Bron would accept that kinda criticism from
Rondo did the same thing on the Bulls when Wade and Butler criticized the entire roster.
I’ll always believe the Rondo Bulls were going to upset the Celtics in that first round if he never got injured
1000% They had so much momentum. Very CP3 Thunder esque
Rondo was seeing the game 10 steps ahead
Too bad Jimmy just wanted to airball jump shots instead of passing it to former NBA champions Rondo and Wade
Man Jimmy is always gonna Jimmy no matter what jersey he’s wearing.
The issue was Rondo got injured and we had to start Isiah Cannon against the 1st seed.
Wade was washed and Butler was playing well.
They would’ve
Rondo tried doing it on the Clippers with Kawhi and it didn’t work at all lol. I remember our sub laughing and calling him our double agent
Seems to be a recurring theme with the Kawhi clippers
Ahhh, PG13 said on his podcast that the Clippers had a rule in practice where if you airball a shot, you have to run some suicides (I guess as punishment). The entire roster had been doing it the entire time, but when Kawhi airballed a shot, he welched out of doing it, saying something like “yall not about to make me feel bad for missing a shot”.
So the entire time, when the rest of the roster was having to do borderline humiliating punishments for airballing a shot, Kawhi was cool with it and didn’t speak up to say that it’s a dumb punishment and that players shouldn’t have to feel bad for missing. But as soon as Kawhi has to do it, suddenly, the punishment is a bad punishment that he shouldn’t have to do.
I’d heard that before, and it clicks even more now with all of the under-the-table payments and stuff coming out. Dude probably thinks he is untouchable in that organization.
I think being a quiet diva that expects star treatment lets you fly under the radar and nobody ever gives you the amount of hate that a conspicuous loudmouth diva like Terrell Owens or Antonio Brown would get. If you just make your demands in a low-key quiet way without going to the media or making quote-able one-liners, the “diva” stigma doesnt get attached to you.
Cuz he eurostepped past the haters
Yes but also Bron just know how not to take offense from everything.
Heard that when things got heated back in Miami days, Bron listens to Udonis and the other guys like Juwan Howard.
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Rondo is an enigma to me, seems like he is all about winning but is also kind of an asshole, a coach on the court, a dirty player who spits on opponents and then a good teammate all at the same time
No wonder CP3 hates him lol
“Something around the eyes, I don’t know, reminds me of… me. No. I’m sure of it, I hate him.”
Rondo was shit talking Chris Paul about having a ring the very next season I believe. It was a like some Around the Horn, PTI fodder. I think CP3 got visibly upset.
Edit: found a source. Rondo said “I’ve got a ring, and you’re never gonna win one.”
It’s about five minutes in. No wonder the hate runs so deep. https://youtu.be/QbpMdJ-pfn8?si=f9JsIZkfPTwsVQox
Rondo said “I’ve got a ring, and you’re never gonna win one.
And now that’s not true.
Rondo has two rings and CP3 is never gonna win one.
These two despise each other ; remember the spitting incident
sounds like chris paul but with championship
2
I will remind everyone each time he is brought up that he is a piece of shit. He’s not “kind of an asshole”, he is legitimately a dangerous piece of shit.
It seems that somehow it is not widely known that he threatened the mother of his children at gunpoint after getting pissed off about her asking their child to stop playing video games. The man then went into a rage destroying property then pulled a gun on her in front of their child. Fuck that guy.
Some guys are too smart for their own good and that’s the impression I get from Rondo.
Being the smartest doesn’t mean you’ll solve the most problems or win the most.
sure but LeBron never had a his own coach write an entire book about what a selfish uncoachable immature shit teammate he was
Kobe did
To be fair, if Phil Jackson coached LeBron, he probably would. I love Phil but that 🥷🏾 got a big mouth. Part of the reason I love him!
And to be fair further, there is a storied history from all sorts of folks of Kobe being an asshole as a team leader where we really haven’t heard too much of that about LeBron.
Bill Simmons has a great book of basketball podcast on Kobe where he wrote about him being an extremely demanding and pushy leader and comparing him to Bill Russell and basically making the point that both guys are winners who made their teams better but Kobe did so by pushing them where Bill was more of an enabler.
Kobe Bryant is the most overrated player in NBA history, so any Kobe hate is preaching to the choir as far as I’m concerned.
We haven’t heard too much of anything about LeBron. He is a control freak who runs a tight ship.
It it hilarious that the top comment here is about LeBron…we know Kobe was an asshole and toxic teammate. It’s okay to admit it.
There’s a story about Robert Parish and the Bulls. Many people forget that Parish played his last two years on the Bulls and picked up a few more rings. Obviously he was a veteran in the lockerroom type by then and only was there for extreme depth. But as the story goes, Michael Jordan decided to start talking shit to him. And that all ended real fast. As the rumor goes, Parish told Jordan to cut the shit out before he hurt His Airness. And no one doubted it. Everyone knows even with Parish as a broken down geriatric at that point, that if he put hands on Jordan, he’d beat him to a pulp.
Bullies only respond if you punch them in the face. This is one of the bad things about the NBA when they effectively got rid of the enforcer role in the league informally. In todays game you can’t be Rick Mahorn anymore. Hell you can’t even be Tyrone Hill anymore.
Let’s be honest about it. Kobe would not have talked shit to Steven Adams. Because he’s a bully, and bullies only target certain kind of people. So, in my book, that makes Kobe Bryant, as far as bullying, into a total bitch. Because if you are only going to pick on people weaker than you, then you are bitch. Try that shit with Charlies Oakley. Try that shit with Kevin Willis.
Robert Parish would know a thing or two about being a bully, since he regularly beat his ex-wife.
Well, the raping also kinda makes him a total bitch
I thought the worst part was the hypocrisy
The more time goes on, the more I dislike Kobe as a human being. It’s just nonstop stories of him being a piece of shit to everyone around him.
He became a superstar at 18. There is a theory that when young adults get famous, they get locked into that age and never grow because they never face the challenges others do that leave you with enough humility to not fall into main character syndrome. It’s why people say Taylor Swift behaves like a teenager in her 30s.
People really don’t give Phil Jackson enough credit for managing Kobe and Jordan. His coaching probably made them tolerable to team mates that resulted in wins.
I think Phil Jackson was a genius at managing personalities. Rodman, MJ, Pippen, Shaq, Kobe….. 11 rings.
Including his time as a player, he has 13 total rings in those 13 Finals appearances, which are the most championship wins by a coach in NBA history.
Damn that’s a cold ass resumé
He lost in 04 and 08 though so that seems worded poorly
AI slop/hallucination
History is written by the clankers
Was he not the coach that lost in the finals to the 04 Pistons and 08 Celtics?
‘Give me all the crazies and I’ll teach them about triangles’
-Phil Jackson, probably.
Lamar Odom, Ron artest, and Andrew Bynum all had personality issues too plus an infinite number of aging stars out of their prime
i wanna see if Phil Jackson can keep Mr. Big Chest under wraps
I think Tomlin is in that same tier (well, not quite obviously) as far as managing personalities. They had a lot of players who left and then either fell off or were absolute locker room cancers everywhere else.
Mr. Brilliant Coach
Read Three Ring Circus by Jeff Pearlman. Everyone always says that Kobe and Shaq could’ve won more rings together but what I got from that was that it’s an absolute miracle that they won three
Everyone always says that Kobe and Shaq could’ve won more rings together
That’s because people treat real life like it’s a videogame, where personalities don’t matter and nothing outside of the sport matters. They just see stats. “If player 1 good and player 2 good, then team good!”
Tbf this strategy has taken the Lakers pretty far
Just managing shaq and kobe on the same team and winning multiple championships is amazing.
The Bulls winning championships was because Pippen stopped shitting his pants against the Pistons in the playoffs. The Bulls were the only team to take any games off the Pistons in 89 when Jackson wasn’t even the coach, going 6 despite Jordan essentially solo-ing them. Then the next year in Jackson’s first year as the Bulls coach they were able to push the Pistons to 7 games, but the infamous Pippen migraine (and rest of team being ass) cost them a chance once again. The biggest hurdle the Bulls were facing was that Jordan didn’t have a competent and reliable #2, and it took years for Pippen to become that.
Jackson’s biggest contribution to the Bulls when he joined was going to Jordan and telling him that they needed him to play in a system that was going to make the team better even if it made Jordan’s stats worse. And Jordan bought in and trusted a young green coach even as the best player in the world. He didn’t complain or whine about it. And he didn’t go to the general manager to try to get the coach replaced like a certain other player did when in the same circumstances.
Jordan might have been a total dick of a teammate, but he was extremely coachable and every single coach he had while in the pros loved him, even becoming best friends with his fucking arch nemesis Chuck Daly on the dream team.
You’re right.
I always bring this up when the all time greats conversation comes up.
Neither MJ or Kobe won a title without being coached by Phil Jackson.
LeBron won titles with guys he randomly picked at the end of the bench. (Ty Lue)
Hell-LeBron took a coach who never was a head coach in the NBA to the finals. (2015)-David Blatt
and then won a title the next year with a first year coach. (2016) (Ty Lue) lmao
uhh are you forgetting Spo was is an All-Time coach?
and Ty Lue deserves more respect cause he is a solid coach
Other than winning with Cleveland, what else has Lue done?
Spolestra did a lot post LeBron era.
led Clippers to first WCF in their 50+ year history
but for real what can Lue do with a perennially crippled Kawhi
Yeah, and MJ and Kobe were two completely different people personality wise, which makes Phil Jackson even more mythical as a player whisperer, in my opinion.
Kobe mimicked every single aspect of Michael Jordan’s existence, but what he could never achieve was the magnetic personality MJ always had. People wanted to be around Jordan, and I don’t think the majority of Kobe’s teammates even liked him.
The fact that Phil Jackson was able to navigate the same “I’ll murder you to win a basketball game” mentality from two very different personalities is what makes him the second or third best coach of all time, in my book.
Shoutout to Kwame Brown, who went from the lunatic intensity of Michael Jordan to the lunatic intensity of Kobe Bryant.
I’ll never forget we had Troy Murphy come to our high school. Troy was out of the league at this point. Everyone was asking him about Kobe and I’ll never forget he said Kobe would have more championships than anyone and be the greatest of all time if he wasn’t such a bad guy/teammate.
Told us Kobe stopped practicing with the other players and would work out by himself only. He would personally attack his teammates and treat them as if they were trash. Treated everyone as if they were beneath him. Told us that his individual greatness was undeniable but said he was an absolutely terrible person.
Had to be 5 years before the crash.
I’ll never forget he said Kobe would have more championships than anyone and be the greatest of all time if he wasn’t such a bad guy/teammate.
Damn. Makes you wonder how bad of a teammate he must have been if you consider how bad Jordan was in that regard while still winning 6.
If you ever read 3 ring circus the fact that team was able to win 3 championships in a locker room filled with young douchebag kobe and prime douchebag shaq is a miracle
That just shows how much coaching matters in certain situations.
I’m convinced some teams could have a high school coach and be fine. But some teams like the Bulls and Lakers could only work because they had Phil holding them together.
This. A radio guy in my town used to say some coaches are like a McDonald’s manager and work best with scrubs, whereas Phil was a maître d’ of a Michelin three star rated restaurant who could squeeze the absolute most out of the very best. And that Phil probably couldn’t manage a McDonald’s.
Great point. I would say the same about Pep Guardiola
I think Kobe makes Jordan look like a model teammate. Jordan was a jerk, but Kobe just seemed like a bad guy.
Him just straight decking Pau Gasol at the olympics.. I get a lot of people thought it was cool and even teammates saying it was badass to set the tone.
But when I saw that as a kid I lost some respect for him. Just bully behavior disguised as hard teaching moment or some shit.
I think Jordan was a more supportive teammate. Like he held his teammates to a high standard but he also wanted the best for them and tried to push them to be better. Kobe seemed more like a “you’re not performing so you’re getting in my way of greatness” that I feel like you never saw from Jordan. Lin wasn’t even that bad on the Lakers. Was he worth what they were paying him? No, but he was a solid PG who knew is role and tried to get guys involved. I always thought it was lame of Kobe to go after Lin so hard when you had jackasses like Nick Young and Jordan Clarkson on that team.
I still remember the game where Phil Jackson supposedly told him to pass more and he clearly passed up wide open shots and passed. It was on national tv too. Kobe looked visibly peeved.
I’ve literally never heard anything good about Kobe, other than his game stats of course.
What I have heard:
It was telling how the narrative about him shifted after his death to “loving father will be missed by his remaining children and wife” with absolutely zero mentions of how he was universally beloved and how the public will miss him.
Kobe’s image got rehabbed by him dying in such a weird way.
His PR also had great spin on him in retirement TBH—he seemed to mellow out and be more chill, had some funny public interviews/appearances with good storytelling, he did Detail with ESPN+ that was pretty cool, he published some kid’s reading books IIRC, and he got a lot of good publicity for involvement in women’s basketball, esp with how he was coaching his daughter’s team, etc
He never changed. When he was coaching little kids he called out a girl (not by name) for missing a tournament game to go to a dance recital, citing “where her focus was at this time.” He also coached that team to beat another girls team by 88 points. That’s not mamba mentality, that’s bad sportsmanship, they’re 12 year olds.
it was just so sudden, unexpected, and such a brutal way to die, not to mention losing your daughter in the same crash…
He really was a prick. Seemed to mellow out when he retired and wasnt competing with anyone anymore, took good care of his kids, was a mentor for young players, became a huge supporter of women’s hoops. But he was terrible to people throughout his playing career. Selfish chucker who demanded the ball in clutch situations and wasn’t good at it. Threw teammates under the bus, then drove the bus himself. Now he’s immortalized as (admittedly dank) meme gifs and gold jerseys at every game, no matter who’s playing. It sucks!
And a rapist. Don’t forget the rape.
The worst part is the hypocrisy
I miss Norm
Dude lived long enough to become a villain but still died a hero, how tf does that work?
Death can be used to whitewash bad people - and he had a PR team
He had a cult of personality when he was alive. I remember bringing up his “legal matter” during the height of the MeToo movement just to ask why he was getting a pass, and got flamed for it. I’ll never forget one comment, that I was only bringing it up because I was a “Jordan fan” (?)
He was a known asshole when he was still alive. And the Colorado rape case that every Kobe Stan loves to ignore doesn’t help either
And he’s a rapist that should have been tossed out the league.
It’s crazy that moment is often presented in a completely different light and now we get this backstory.
The Kobe PR machine is unmatched.
Honestly did he get immortalized with his accidental death in 2020?
Yes, absolutely. That’s how it usually works in the contemporary media culture. It’s almost a form of sainthood.
As someone in LA, I didn’t feel like it shifted at all down here. People loved him and people continued to love him when he died. He got more murals and courts in his honor, but if anything, people also began to mention his faults more often
Seriously. Some people act like he’s the greatest baller of all time, and he’s not even the greatest Laker. And that’s without the whole rapist part!
Kobe shaking his fist up at you right now
Yes, he is a basketball martyr basically. And his fanboys are wild
He already was worshipped but the tragic early death made it so his legacy will never be put under a harsh microscope like it deserves to be
Yes if he were still alive a lot more people would hate him for being a rapist
it started during his last season. Suddenly the guy was being nice to media, etc.. He was often described as a moodish, chucking AH most of his career
He was an impressive human being. Doesn’t make him a good person, but he was good at everything he did. Except being a teammate I guess
And not sexually assaulting women. He was terrible at that.
I don’t know what bad and good means in this context and I’m scared to ask
Dude raped a girl
Just ask Kobe.
“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”
Its because he did a lot of work on being the best player he could be, including training at altitude so that he would be ready for anything. Google “Kobe Bryant Colorado” to learn more
and cheating on his girl
Don’t get it mixed up.
He was an impressive basketball player.
But he’s a shitty human being.
I understand idolizing the player, but we need to despise how shitty he is as a person.
He got a lot better as he got older, but he was very old school. Basketball greats (MJ, Bobby Knight etc) acted like psychopaths to get their teams to play well or just to be the alpha.
I actually think this is one of Bron’s biggest positive impacts on the league. He cared about his teammates liking him and acted as such, and the expectation for a leader is different now.
He was also a psychopath and a rapist, but somehow he spun the narrative to #mabamentality and the girl dad shit
Kind of like another moment from Kobe’s past. Something to do with Colorado I think?
Nah, I knew Kobe was wrong the whole time, and I’m not even a big fan of the Jesus freak.
Yeh, no big secret Kobe was a fucking asshole.
Different people needs different leadership inputs. Some need encouragement and coddling, some prefer it when you get on their ass and challenge them.
Remember when USA beat Spain in the gold medal game in 2008 and when Pau reported for training camp, he opened his locker and he saw Kobe had hung his gold medal inside? That’s a pretty big asshole thing to do if Pau wasn’t amenable to that sort of thing.
You can be hard on people without being an unrepentant dick, CP3 is a notorious asshole who gets on people’s nerves but he wasn’t a dick to teammates
CP3 feels like he just annoys ppl on the court for the game. Off the court I like to think he was pretty ok, especially being president of the players association for 8 years
Hello police? Chris Paul trying to beat me up!
Mike D’Antoni tried to get in the locker room
Nah he’s very demanding of his teammates at all times, which can understandably wear on you over the years but he was an elite competitor
No doubt he’s demanding but that just feels more of a style clash instead of him being an asshole
Yes absolutely, CP3 is a terrific dude off the court and almost every teammate has said so.
I’ll always appreciate how he went out of his way to make sure the jazz had food and wine/beer/soft drinks sent to their locker room when they were quarantined for hours in okc the night the nba stopped
lots of all time great players in sports were incredible assholes. Barry bonds also comes to mind
It’s irritating when people excuse being assholes just because they’re good at something, especially the average sports fan who lionize this sort of behavior. There are plenty of all time greats who aren’t raging assholes, it’s not a requirement to be great.
It def isn’t, look at Hakeem, for example.
Akeem was so much of an asshole in his early career he rededicated himself to Islam and added the H. He’s my all time favorite player but he was seen as a bit of a head case at first.
You don’t have to change sports. MJ is right there. Great leader? Yeah. Also a hyper competitive asshole that demanded 101% effort - because he was giving 101% effort.
Google Kobe Colorado to learn more
Kobe was a Jordan clone, so he took the asshole behavior with him too.
Not speaking with a teammate for 5 months is straight up diva shit, especially since Jeremy asked for his help, just that he didn’t enjoy the way he was dishing it out.
If you’re a leader, then you should know how to speak with everyone on your team and get them to perform to the best of their ability, not give them the cold shoulder just because they don’t go about things the same way as you.
It’s not the first time he does such things, but media gonna call it mamba mentality.
He tells me I can’t talk to him. He tells me I need more accolades under my belt before I come talk to him. He was dead serious. -Smush Parker
I don’t think its leadership style, I think its Kobe being an asshole. Rule number one of always sharing your mind and being direct is that you better be ready when that same energy is returned to you. Kobe was antisocial and tried to hide it by acting like a lone wolf.
The mental gymnastics people go through to defend this behavior. Was he also trying to get the ref who he called a homophobic slur to step up for missing a call? 😂
Imagine Spain wins that close game and Pau pulls that same move on Kobe? He’d never talk to Pau again!
I lost a tremendous amount of respect for Kobe after watching the video where Jeremy Lin tries to help him up, but Kobe trips him with his foot while smiling, and then acts like he’s the one helping Lin up.
I think Lin probably went through experiences like that countless times as an Asian male playing basketball.
Yea Lin endured so much racism in his tenure playing hoop, even probably stuff he can’t prove. Like he was one of the top rated HS players in california, but was barely recruited by top college teams.
It’s been an uphill battle his whole life.
Lin led his high school to the California DII state title, won player of the year, and set it’s best record ever - and wasn’t recruited at all.
He led Harvard to it’s best season ever, setting a ton of records, but was also not recruited at all.
He’s legit one of my favorite NBA stories ever
I watched one of his games when he was in college. Somebody in the crowd called him a ch@@k pretty loud.
Right he had to walk on to Harvard and then got passed in the draft. He had a solid summer league notably playing against Wall which at least got him a G-league and two way. Before going on that legendary run
Stanford didnt even give a shit about recruiting a state champion basketball player in their own fucking backyard. Palo Alto High School is literally right across El Camino Real from Stanford 😭
The trip did it for you? For me personally, it was the rape. Big nono in my book.
Worst part was the hypocrisy
I remember Kenyon Martin teasing Lin styling dreads while having Chinese tattoos.
I never seen this kobe lin tripping video. I gotta look that up
https://youtube.com/shorts/DULS4hYTw_E?si=raC6vRyRT7s0mdup
wow, kobe legit just slipped getting up and made lin slip and then hugged him because he almost fell. insane to think anything otherwise
Kobe never got over getting clowned during the Linsanity run and the media bombarding him with Lin questions before and after the game.
They’re all big babies with fragile egos
Not all but the ones people tend to idolise
This was the “he took it personal” thing against Lin
I’ve said this before but Kobe is my favorite player of all time but he was an asshole and dick to people for no real reason. There are a lot of stories over the years that got buried because his PR team did a wonderful job but as I got older “mamba mentality” just seemed like an excuse for being a dick to people.
Yeah whenever a story comes out about Kobe or MJ being assholes to teammates, people will immediately defend it as them having a winner mentality and the other party is too soft.
It’s really no different to a workplace environment where the veteran is a dick to their new colleague for no good reason.
Meanwhile you have guys like Bill Russell or Tim Duncan, who are living proof, that you can have unparalleled success in sports, without tearing down your teammates. Yet, people keep talking about “mamba mentality”, because it’s an easy way to internalise being an asshole, without feeling bad about it.
He’s a perfect embodiment of the “get yours and fuck everyone else” mentality that is being pushed on everyone to rationalize being a selfish and individualistic person. There has been a lot of work done to sanitize and make these personality traits look desirable in the face of the worst wealth inequality in human history.
Did you know that Russell was at the I have a dream speech? And they wanted him to be on stage but he thought his side would take away attention from the other speakers
he also liked putting his dick in the asshole of a non consenting hotel worker
I mentioned in a comment here, not sure if you’re a LA kings fan too, but Luc Robitaille’s wife once called Kobe an asshole when I was with her at her charity event and she’s like the nicest person on the planet and I’ve literally never heard her say a bad thing about anyone or anyone say a bad thing about her.
That’s how shitty he was that he’s got like the nicest kindest most innocent people in the world calling him an asshole.
I always thought Mamba mentality was just an excuse for him being a dick even when I was 12
I was talking to Luc Robitaille’s (President of LA Kings) wife Stacia at her charity event I was helping with once, about 12-13 years ago. She’s like the nicest person ever, the type you never hear anyone say a bad thing about or who says bad things about anybody.
His name came up in conversation and she absolutely tore into him and called Kobe a “fucking asshole.”
Kobe out there doing shit to make the nicest people out there be like “fuck this dude.”
Like who tf starts shit with a guy like Jeremy Lin?
I feel like that’s how you knew when a person was bad news as a kid. The nicest kid who got along with everybody… didn’t like that other kid.
Personally that’s the way I judge people. If all the shitty assholes love them and all the good people don’t, that tells me an awful lot.
Laker security guards will tell you how much of an a-hole he was. And these the guys there to protect him.
LA is the worst with glazing players who were bad people, specifically Lakers players.
The staff behind the scene - That’s where you really see what kind of a person a player is. Steph Curry is legendary for treating Warrior staff and employees with kindness and respect.
I think he grew as a person once he had his daughters and once he retired but yeah, prior to that he was an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. There’s a story about how he would keep the rest of the team on the tarmac waiting for him for a while and he would fly in on his chopper and take his sweet time boarding the plane and this is just one of the many stories buried over the years lol
He never chilled out. He was always a selfish asshole. Til his body hit the floor.
People don’t like to hear it but Kobe just wasn’t a good person. He’s a damn good basketballer but I wouldn’t want anyone I know to have a relationship with him outside of basketball.
Kobe’s first daughter was born in 2003. Lin played for the Lakers 2014–2015. Kobe was 36 that year. His final season was the next year, 2015–2016.
this incident was well into Kobe’s career. His oldest woulda been 11-12 at the time. When did Kobe stop being an asshole?
Nah I think the “he grew up when he had daughters” thing was more spin.
i mean several players tried to screw with jeremy lin. let’s not ignore the elephant in the room as to why
I think this well known with Kobe.
Leadership isn’t yelling at people. Leadership is building people up to get them on close to your level. If they make a mistake, correct them and show them how to fix it.
People really get leadership mixed up with straight up being an a**hole.
I remember Charles Barkley having a good take on this that part of being a leader for him was learning what his teammates responded to. Some guys would get hyped up if you yelled at them or laid into them and take it out on the opposing team, for other guys it would just break their confidence and make them play worse.
Jeff Teague said Kobe trying to recruit him at his Prime when he was with the Hawks, he specifically said he reject it because around the league, its well known Kobe is a nightmare to play with.
When Hawks met Lakers in Regular season, Kobe keep pointing at Lin and scream to Jeff “you leave me with this?”.
Teague said he was so flabbergasted he said to himself “yeah, I make the right decision”. I love him as basketball player and my legend, IMO lakers goat, but this dude was just a bad person.
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pApWNfziobQ
Lin wasn’t even that bad on the Lakers. I mean, he wasn’t an all star or anything but he was a completely competent league-average point guard. I really don’t think Teague would have been that much better on that broken roster. Lin tried his best and had a few great moments. It always seemed like Kobe had more respect for Lin after he left the Lakers because he wasn’t pinpointing on every little error or mistake.
I’m not a Lin fanboy by any stretch. He’s a talented player but ultimately if he wasn’t Asian he wouldn’t have the name recognition he does. He a solid pick and roll PG who had a decent NBA career that was cut short by injuries.
He wasn’t the second coming of Pete Maravich like some people liked to think, but he also wasn’t dumpster trash like Kobe and some other people seemed to think.
Jeremy Lin talked his points really articulately and clearly, explained the issue succinctly. He’s actually a really cool guy.
Curious to hear what Kobe has to say about this.
Probably nothing it seems
Have Tatum text him and see what he says.
Grab an ouija board and you can probably find out
That Harvard education lol.
You don’t need Harvard for that. Plenty of Harvard assholes. Education helps but just need a level of humility.
They don’t teach that at Harvard. He got into Harvard because he’s that way, not the other way around.
Republicans
Trump would’ve given him a Medal of Freedom by now if he was still alive.
Lin was hella disrespected in the nba cause he Asian. He got screwed by Carmelo too
Double edged sword - disrespected because he was Asian, but was also more famous/popular because he was Asian.
Maybe. But I think his basketball career would had gone a lot smoother if he wasn’t Asian.
being a jackass is not a leadership style, that’s just being a jackass.
Sounds like Kobe was thin skinned as fuck
He came up with his own nickname.
Mamba mentality to be a mean person and actively harm your team by not communicating well <3
Kobe did everything in his power to be just like MJ. And that included having his douchebag personality
The difference though is MJ is social and charismatic whereas Kobe for the better part of his career was antisocial and a psychopath.
I think Kobe was one of those guys that put on this tough guy persona even though he was from Italy and a professional basketball family.
So the whole asshole tough guy act felt like a facade and he was just a rich kid trying to be tough.
Jeremy Lin probably has the moral high ground against pretty much everyone in the league because it’s openly acknowledged that he was discriminated against because of his race.
But that moral high ground doesn’t really do anything for you when you’re up against a dead legend whose death basically wiped away his shortcomings.
I also it was at a time where Kobe was probably struggling to accept that he was washed. That kind of assholeness only ‘works’ if the team is winning. Looks foolish for someone to act like that when the team was godawful and you part of the reason why.
Say what you will about kobe, but he was a terrible leader. The inverse Tim Duncan. They both ran the 2000s in opposite ways.
Possible Kobe never let go of the game in NY when Lin lit him up? Especially after Kobe shrugged off the idea that he might have to guard Lin like he doesn’t justify his elite defense when a reporter asked him about possibly guarding Lin to slow him down during the height of linsanity
That’s why you can never take Kobe fans serious, they worship the most bitter, rotten, selfish athlete to ever play the game
It’s okay to be disrespectful to a disrespectful person.
Idolizing Kobe the basketball player is cool. He was an incredible talent and a must-watch player in his prime seasons.
Idolizing Kobe as a human being and turning him into some saintly figure. That’s just fucking weird.
Kobe was ass that season and was straight shooting the Lakers out of games before he got injured. He called the rest of the team trash but frankly he single-handedly lost them games, too. It’s hard to be the team leader if you aren’t walking the talk, regardless of how good you used to be.
Kobe also gave Byron Scott a free pass for being a shit coach. Maybe someone like Kobe has the cachet to ignore his coach, but everyone else on that team was trying to do the right thing and follow the coach, even when it was blatantly obvious that Scott was incompetent at his job (he had the team running broken triangle plays and pinch post actions that led to, at best, long 2’s. The other half of the offense was Carlos Boozer doing pick-and-pops (he literally NEVER rolled). The few times he let the offense run on its own, Lin would basically spam the pick-and-roll and run a transition offense and they would win shootouts (see: every time the Lakers played the Celtics that season).
Don’t get me started on Scott starting Ronnie Price over Lin. I can’t prove Scott is racist, but if it walks like a racist duck and quacks like a racist duck, it’s probably racist.
But yeah, Kobe was a bonafide asshole and got away with rape. The amount of character rehabilitation he got in his death is surreal.